


wild roses

by rainingover



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Clones, Existential Angst, Falling In Love, Free Will, Geographical Isolation, Loneliness, M/M, Moral Ambiguity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22991818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainingover/pseuds/rainingover
Summary: Winwin says, "Lots of people look the same, proper ones that were born naturally thousands of miles apart, and sometimes people who look similar date each other. I don't see the big deal," and Sicheng agrees to a certain extent, but he knows that it's not the same thing.Those people are not molecularly identical.Sicheng is desperately lonely, Winwin's existence is illegal, and somewhere in-between there's a love story.
Relationships: Dong Si Cheng | Winwin/ Dong Si Cheng | Winwin
Comments: 32
Kudos: 69
Collections: Winwin Fic Fest Round 1





	wild roses

**Author's Note:**

> Written for prompt A090: Sicheng is the last person alive on Earth so he decides to clone himself for company. 
> 
> Thank you prompter, I had a lot of fun with this and I hope it is at least a semblance of the story you were hoping for! 
> 
> Title from _Wild Roses_ by Of Monsters & Men

Sicheng tries to get up without waking him, but he fails. Next to him, Winwin stirs, tugging at his arm. “It’s early,” he murmurs, as though he knows without even opening his eyes that Sicheng is about to leave him. “Let's stay asleep for a while longer.”

“No,” Sicheng sits up. Their room is warm. “No, I can't sleep, I need to be up.” The reality is, he needs to distract himself from, well, everything.

“Suit yourself.” Winwin rolls back over, eyes closed. He’s so unphased, so calm and collected. At least, he acts like it. Sometimes, Sicheng finds it refreshing, but this morning it pisses him off. That’s what _he_ used to be like, when he was younger, braver, stupider. Maybe he's still stupid now. He must be, to be in this position. Except now he cares, now he feels guilt, now he feels pain and he feels regret with it. It’s too much.

Sometimes, he truly wishes he were more like Winwin— indulgent and self-assured, able to act so casual about the most serious of things, no matter what he's thinking.

“I'm going to the gym,” Sicheng says as he pulls on a sweater that they share. They share all of Sicheng's wardrobe. “Winwin? Are you listening?”

Winwin mumbles, “Uhuh, gym,” his voice laced with sleep, and Sicheng’s heart lurches in his chest. Part of him just wants to get back into bed and sleep the day away. He still dreams of life away from Earth— of a time when he was younger and surrounded by other people. He feels guilty when he wakes up some days, because he still sometimes has dreams of a life without Winwin, and it isn’t even Winwin’s fault that he’s alive, it’s Sicheng’s. He doesn't know what Winwin dreams about, or if he dreams at all. He hasn't asked.

“I’ll make breakfast for us when I'm done,” Sicheng says.

“I’ll do it, there's something I wanna make,” Winwin says into the pillow, but then he seems to go right back to sleep and Sicheng can’t even be mad at him for it; he would be the same if he had half a chance, but his mind is too busy to sleep.

Sicheng leaves the compound through the side gate with the long-disabled alarm. He realised a long time ago that there isn’t anything dangerous out there, beyond their home. There isn’t _anything_ out there. His bio-suit covers him head to toe, not that the suits seem to do much good against the elements, even if the storms have lessened in their ferocity in the last couple of years. He wonders what his old team would think of him evading the compound and how much they'd disapprove of his decisions over the last few years. They would definitely disapprove of Winwin. 

He finds nothing outside of the compound this morning. The traps that they had set are untouched, the landscape is unchanged, and the silence is palpable. Aside from the soft rustle of the trees, hundreds of years old and dying, Sicheng comes across no signs of life—not that he was expecting to. They shouldn’t leave the compound, even in their suits. It’s dangerous, it’s against everything he was ever trained, and even venturing to the edge of the compound has proved fatal before. That’s how he ended up alone: his whole team gone in the passing of one storm. If the people back at Moon Corp knew he was leaving the scientific compound they'd be furious, but he can leave and no one will know any better because, as far as anyone else is aware, he’s still there, asleep. If Base link in over the radio to check on him, Winwin will wake up and drag his ass out of bed to answer the call.

He’ll answer with a worrying ease to Sicheng’s name and he’ll read out that day’s data readings and he’ll joke about the weather and despite the myriad of differences only they can see between each other, base won’t know any different. They’ll just hear Sicheng's voice. It’s genius, really.

Sicheng had found it funny at first, but now it’s unsettling to watch Winwin pretend to be him, like hearing a song played so very slightly off-key that it only registers as wrong somewhere very, very deep inside one's consciousness. It rings too true, too real, and it reminds him of the sins he’s committed, not that he’s ever been particularly religious. 

Sometimes Sicheng thinks that maybe Winwin is just better at living than he is.

He wanders further into the forest and wonders about never turning back, about walking and walking until he can’t any longer. Winwin could be Sicheng, then. Winwin could take his life, and do whatever he wants with it. So, Sicheng walks further than he has before, and it feels like a perverse sort of freedom, even if he only has ninety minutes of clean air left in the tank attached to his suit. But then he thinks of dark brown eyes and warm, familiar hands, and something deep inside of his core aches terribly. 

So he turns his heel in the dirt, turns back and heads home, to Winwin.

The compound had been fully completed by the time Sicheng and his team arrived on Earth. It stood sprawling across the abandoned landscape, like a paradise surrounded by nature's decay. And, at first, it blossomed with each passing day. The plants thrived, the excitement was tangible, and Sicheng could hardly believe he was a part of something so important for the future of humanity. Base had employed only the best scientists to ensure the compound would be habitable, comfortable and a conducive environment for scientific study, without any contact from outside for at least ten years. 

There were more of them, then. A whole team of ten. The day they’d arrived on Earth had felt momentous, and it _was_. They were the first people to live there in hundreds of years, and it was their job to monitor the environment around them to see if it would be able to sustain human life full time on the planet again. This was important. _Sicheng_ was important,

Sicheng was determined not to fuck this up. It makes him laugh, thinking back, because he’d tried _so_ hard to do the right thing back then, even down to the most minute of details. He’d measured their food portions precisely when it was his turn to cook. He completed every check in with Base down to the exact minute he promised he would. He slept for the exact amount of hours recommended, and diligently studied everything he could about Earth in the mornings when he woke before his team. He was, by all standards, a model employee of Moon Corp, and he’d enjoyed doing everything to the book.

Things moved smoothly, like clockwork, and the mission was initially deemed a success. For eighteen months, they worked as a thriving unit, nd Sicheng became fond of his new normal. Then, everything changed.

The electro-storms of 2542 were the worst recorded in Earth’s atmosphere since humanity had left the planet behind. The video satellite had been damaged in the huge wind and hail storms that had whipped up a month prior, but they’d calmed down since and the team had decided it was time to try and fix it. They were missing their weekly video-calls with home, relying only on the basic radio line that remained to communicate with and receive commands from Base. 

On the day they were due to head out to the edge of the compound to fix up the satellite, Sicheng had woken up with a sore throat and a headache, and when he’d sent a temperature reading back to Corp Base they’d advised him he was to rest for forty-eight hours. So he rested, and he waited indoors, and he watched the weather change suddenly outside of the glass walls of their home. This storm came on suddenly, almost in the blink of an eye, and it came on with a fearsome ferocity, the strikes of lightning almost constant. 

None of the team returned to him. 

He’d ventured out himself after four days, once the storm subsided enough to and his temperature read normally again. His suit felt heavy, his heart racing as hail battered him through the layers. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find when he reached the Satellite, but he didn’t expect to find no survivors. Not one. It made him feel incredibly fragile.

He’d returned to the compound, his oxygen already running low in his suit after hours spent doing what he could to give his team something close to a decent burial, and had radioed into Moon Corp Base to declare the loss. 

And then, he’d cried. He’d cried for the people who he'd lost and he cried for himself, and he cried because he was tired, and confused, and everything suddenly felt far too big for him to cope with alone. Over time the tears had dried up, and he’d set himself back to work, diligently focusing on the mission, working day and night to distract himself from the fact that he would be alone until Base sent the return ship to pick him up once they’d declared the mission null and void.

Sicheng had always thought of himself as a solitary kind of person before this. He liked spending time alone, he liked conducting research, and in university, he'd thrived on coming to conclusions without the input of any other minds. He found himself good company back at Base. Ten would laugh at him and drag him out of the dormitories to socialise, but Sicheng was always happiest in his own quiet.

It’s different when you have the _choice_.

When there are people there, you can choose to ignore them. When there are people talking, you can choose to turn off. But when you’re stranded in a sealed compound on an inhabitable planet, solitude becomes unbearable. Still, at least he could assume that soon he’d be returning back to society. 

Sicheng had found out the hard way that his assumptions were far from correct.

When Sicheng gets back to the compound after his walk and removes his suit, Winwin is already up and in the kitchen making them breakfast. He turns around and smiles, leaning back against the countertop as though this is normal. Although, Sicheng reasons, it _is_ normal for Winwin. It’s all he’s ever known for real— he was created in the compound, after all. The bland meal rations and cheap wine is the only food and drink he's tasted. Sicheng is the only person he's tasted, and he is aware that is fucked up. It’s so fucked up, it _feels_ fucked up everytime they touch, but it also feels like home and it feels like belonging, and Sicheng has nothing else. 

Sicheng is all Winwin knows and Sicheng is all he wants and all he _loves,_ and Sicheng can barely breathe anymore. Winwin suffocates him, the fear suffocates him. Sicheng has committed so many sins since Winwin first kissed him that he can hardly look himself in the eye. The irony isn't lost on him.

Still, he smiles back at Winwin. “What are you cooking?” he asks, as if this is normal to him too.

“It’s a sweet porridge. I’ve added cinnamon, nutmeg and these unidentified seeds from the very depths of the food stores.” He holds out the spoon for Sicheng to try some. “I think you’ll like it.”

“It’s good,” Siccheng says, licking his lips. It’s a little too hot, straight from the pan, but Winwin is right about how it tastes, of course he is. 

“I think I’ll make it like this tomorrow morning too, if I’m going to be cooking again.” He doesn’t ask it like a question, because it isn’t one. They’ve got a routine now, like they’re living in some sort of domestic fantasyland down here, abandoned on this toxic mess of a planet. 

Maybe they’re a mess too, in a way. Or in many ways.

Sicheng nods, turning away to head to the bathroom to shower. “They’re flax seeds, by the way,” he says. “The unidentified seeds, they're called flax seeds.”

“Flax seeds… Yes!” Winwin smiles. “Like in the bread that auntie used to make.”

“You’ve never tasted that bread.” Sicheng blinks at him and Winwin's smile falters, but he regains composure after a few seconds.

Sicheng's chest constricts with fondness. 

“I’ve done everything that you have done, or it feels like I have.” Winwin looks down for a moment. “Are you okay this morning?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sicheng lies. “I’m just… I’m tired. I’ll go shower now, save me some porridge.” 

Winwin nods. “Love you."

“Love you too,” Sicheng replies, and he really does. That’s what scares him the most. 

No one was going to walk through the compound gate and into his life, so he'd taken matters into his own hands, in the lab. It was 3:33am, he remembers, when he'd set the chamber to begin cloning, and at the time he'd felt like it was significant. 

He hadn’t slept for seventy three hours and counting when he did it and that’s an excuse he’s held onto ever since. I wasn’t thinking straight, I _couldn’t_ think straight, he has told himself a hundred times. And he was so alone; seven years of nothing but silence stretching out ahead of him, like a blanket of snow freezing his bones. He didn’t want to be cold or silent or alone, but he had no choice but to be. The mission was continuing, whether he wanted it to or not and it would be over seven years until he’d see a face other than his own again.

It’s ironic, he thinks now, because cloning himself just meant he looks at a version of his own face more often than he could ever have wanted to, not that either of them see it that way. They never have really. They're polar opposites cut from the same cloth. Winwin says, "Lots of people look the same, proper ones that were born naturally thousands of miles apart, and _sometimes_ people who look similar date each other. I don't see the big deal," and Sicheng agrees to a certain extent, but he knows that it's not the same thing. Those people are not molecularly identical.

At least the face he sees when he wakes up next to Winwin each morning has a certain sort of peace in it—in his gently closed eyes and his soft resting smile. Sicheng knows his own expression musn’t hold that sort of peace anymore, at least not now they’re less than a year from the end of the mission. 

After over five years together, Sicheng is coming to terms with his reality: that in creating Winwin he broke laws, and shattered moral codes and turned everything he thought his world might be into a tragic tale of warning. Winwin is biological contraband—flesh and bone and memories that don’t truly belong to him—and he didn’t _ask_ for that, it was just hrust upon him. Sicheng is to blame, but they’ll both pay for it, once Moon Corp and the rest of the scientific community find out at mission end.

When Winwin kisses him later, in the glass conservatory next to the plants they’ve been tending to since the early spring, Sicheng kisses him back with fervour and tries not to hate himself even more than he already does.

 _We’re different,_ he thinks, and it's true. They don’t kiss the same, which has to count for something, and they make different noises when they touch each other. Sometimes they don’t even look alike. Winwin has taken to wearing his hair slicked back off his face, and Sicheng hasn’t done anything but let his fall naturally over his forehead for a long time now.

 _We’re so, so different_ , he reminds himself, and then he makes his noises—his and his alone—as Winwin’s hand snakes underneath his waistband and lower, lower, lower.

Cloning isn’t illegal, but it must only be performed under strict conditions, after rigorous testing, signed off by the director of Moon Corp. 

Sicheng is well aware of this, even though Human Cloning isn’t part of his daily work. He got to clone an orchid once, watched it come to life and studied it intensely. That’s all he is meant to clone: plants, flowers, small seeds of life. Not humans. 

He took the oath when he joined the Moon Corp Fleet aged 19. He knows all of the rules; he can practically recite them in his sleep. He’d known when he signed up to the mission back to Earth that he was committing to a long time away from everything and everyone he’d grown up with. He’d known he would be trapped inside a thousand square feet compound with nine other fleet members, and that once they’d been dropped on humanity’s old planet the only return mission would take place after ten years. 

Ten years trapped in a bubble on an inhabitable planet had seemed exciting, and it was at first. He’d bonded well with the rest of the team, and while they kept their relationship professional, they had almost moulded into a sort of family in the year and four months that they worked together. As the youngest member of the team, Sicheng was doted on by his elders, and maybe that’s why they were so insistent that he stayed back and rested on that fateful day. 

Sicheng had continued the team’s work after their deaths— barely sleeping, barely stopping to breathe. He tested and reported and tested again, and then he watched the storms come and go, raging outside of the compound for weeks at a time. It was a good distraction from his own thoughts, and he thought he might be alright, really, but four months after he was left alone, Sicheng broke down and cried angrily to himself for days. 

Survivor’s guilt, Moon Corp told him, is normal, and they advised that they’d provide him with counselling if he required it. But that counselling would be via radio only, since the video satellite had never been fixed, and they would only be able to facilitate this for him once a month, so while Sicheng appreciated the sentiment, it only made him feel incredibly and completely abandoned. He’d tried to push the feeling aside, and he’d carried on tending to the seedlings in the indoor gardens, walking the perimeter to check the atmospheric changes. He continued logging temperatures, weather patterns and signs of life. 

One lone flower had begun growing near the satellite station a few months after. It was a wild rose and Sicheng was obsessed with it. He felt ridiculous for it, but the flower became his focus, his one sign of hope. He didn’t have to be alone, he thought, because he had the rose to himself, and it would thrive, and more would blossom, and this would give him a reason to want to get out of bed.

The rose died before it even reached its full bloom, and Sicheng couldn’t get out of bed for days.

He’d radioed into Base to ask for official evacuation under extenuating circumstances, since it appeared that Base had no plan to void the mission themselves, and waited for a response over the static. 

“I’m afraid that is impossible,” the tinny, faraway voice had replied. “You signed a ten year contract.”

“So did the others.” He’d gritted his teeth. “And they’re gone.”

He couldn’t bring himself to say _dead_ , but it’s what he meant.

“It’s unfortunate,” Base had told him. “But we have faith in your abilities to continue a successful mission alone.”

“Is that it?” Sicheng had never spoken back to his superiors like this before. Maybe it was something to do with the camera links being down, but over the radio he felt braver. “Carry on alone? For almost eight years?”

A lengthy silence followed, a hollow static on the line between planets. 

“You signed a ten year contract for this mission did you not?” The voice on the line repeated. They lacked any empathy. Sicheng didn't recognise it, it certainly wasn't Kun, the mission co-head. Kun could never be so matter of fact. Sicheng wonders, thinking back, if the person on the other end of the line had struggled with being such a dick or whether they'd enjoyed it. He wonders if they’d felt anything for him at all. “And you have completed less than half. A lot less.”

Sicheng had closed his eyes and breathed through his nose. He'd been part of a team for less than eighteen months, and now he'd been alone for eleven, so he hadn't yet served even three years of his sentence (because that's how it felt, like a sentence) yet. “I understand.”

When the call ended, Sicheng screamed as loud as he ever had. No one could hear him, there was no one around to hear him, and the sound just echoed through the empty home.

Somehow, that just made him feel worse.

They watch a movie one night, projected onto one wall of their bedroom. When the compound was designed, it was mainly with science in mind, but Sicheng is glad that all home-comforts were not forgotten. To someone looking in through the gap in their bedroom door, or through the windows behind their bed, this could look so _ordinary,_ and that scares Sicheng because sometimes he forgets that they aren’t ordinary at all. Sometimes he feels like this is the most ordinary relationship he's ever been in and when he remembers it all: who they are, their secrets, the ending they both know is coming, it knocks the wind out of his chest.

Winwin stills Sicheng's shaking knee with a hand and pauses the movie. “You’re fidgeting,” he says. It’s not an accusation, though. There’s concern in his eyes.

“I’m thinking.” Siting bites at his lip.

“Thinking happens inside here.” Winwin taps his forehead and grins. “You’re fidgeting.”

Sicheng closes his eyes. “Do you think we’re good for each other?”

“Yeah, of course we are,” Winwin replies, as if it’s obvious. He runs a hand into his hair, pushing it back further off his face. “Why? Are you unhappy?”

Sicheng shakes his head. “Not with you,” he says, which isn’t a lie. Winwin hasn’t done anything wrong, at least not on purpose. “I love being with you.”

“Then, we’re good for each other.” Winwin threads their fingers together and smiles. He goes to unpause the movie, but Sicheng stops him.

“They won’t think that,” he blurts out. “The corporation, the government, everyone. If they find out what we mean to each other...”

Winwin doesn’t miss a beat. “The way I remember it, I seduced you,” he says. “Using my own free will. Stop freaking out over stupid cloning laws. I wasn’t made for slavery, I wasn’t made for the harvesting of my organs or to be treated like a pet. I’m here to live alongside you, and I _chose_ to fall in love. I know you’ve been reading all the material on how immoral human cloning is, I saw the books on the countertop before you put them back in the library room last week.”

Sicheng frowns. “Did you, though? Did you choose? Are you sure it was free will?”

“If you’re trying to break up with me, this is a weird way to go about it." Winwin looks at him. "I’m pretty sure people usually just grind each other down with arguments.”

“I’m not trying anything. I just want you to be sure.” Sicheng feels stupid, but he needs to hear it, not that it helps much.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.” Winwin kisses him on the forehead. When he sits back he looks bored of the conversation. “Can we watch the rest of this film now?” he asks.

Sicheng tries hard not to fidget for the rest of the movie.

The cloning process had only taken ten hours, which surprised him. It made him realise how little about human cloning he really knew. Still, he knew enough from the cloning procedures on the plants they’d grown in the indoor gardens here to know what to do, even in his delirious state.

For six of those hours, Sicheng had slept for the first time in days, and when he woke up, he was almost certain that what he’d set into motion before he slept had only been a dream. It was seven months after he was refused a return home, eighteen months after he'd buried his team, and the same amount of time spent without them as he had with.

Eighteen months was all it had taken to drive Sicheng to irrational decisions like cloning himself for company. It sounds crazy, he knows that now, but the time between the death of his team, the death of his flower, and the night he created life again had felt like a fucking _lifetime_. It might have been less than two years, but years had stopped meaning anything to Sicheng. He was desperate, and this was the only thing that would save him, he was certain of it, at least before he'd managed to get some sleep.

The humming of the chamber told Sicheng that this had not been a dream, and as he’d stood in the middle of the lab and watched the shadows pass behind the tinted glass of the chamber as his clone was created, Sicheng had ignored the sinking feeling in his stomach and had left the room. 

He lay awake in his bed, eyes glued to the ceiling and counted all of the Corp rules he’d broken in his head. Thirteen, at least. Fourteen if you counted the oath he'd taken to preserve life on Earth but not to introduce any alien life to the planet. Not that his clone would be alien, but... It was a complicated rule. Then, after the worry, came the defiance and, instead, Sicheng counted all of the ways the Corp had let _him_ down since he signed on to train with them, and he counted twenty two.

Maybe, he had reasoned with himself, they would thank him for this one day. Surely he could complete a lot more work down here with another pair of hands, and a pair of hands that he knew would be useful, because they were, in essence, _his_ hands. Moon Corp would realise that Sicheng had only done this for the good of science, the good of humanity as a whole, and they’d award him with an honour of the highest rank, or at least a medal. 

Maybe he was just grasping at fantasy, because he’d known all along that he wasn’t doing this for the good of humanity. He was going this because he was desperate and lonely, and the only other option he could think of was to try to sleep for the next seven years, and he could barely sleep as it was. He still can't.

Sicheng had approached the lab with caution. He was prepared for scared eyes, for confusion and disorientation, when his clone was complete. He was prepared to have to calm the person down, to talk to them softly and explain their entire existence.

But when he—the other him, the one that hadn’t existed the day before—emerged from the chamber, he didn’t look cared, he looked _pleased_ with himself. 

Winwin took to living like a duck takes to water. He seemed to find it easy, simple, like he had been waiting for this for a thousand years. The first words he’d said to a Sicheng were, “You’re going to name me Winwin, aren’t you?” and he'd been smiling as he said it.

“How do you know?” Sicheng had asked him, dumbfounded. He was amazed, really, at how perfect a replica his clone looked, made in his image even down to the shape of every single tooth on display when his clone grinned at him. He hadn’t thought about a name, or maybe he had, maybe he _was_ going to call his clone Winwin. He couldn’t remember anymore. 

“You thought about it just before you started the process, it’s fresh in the memories.” He 'd paused, then. “Sorry, is it weird to be thinking about your memories? You left them in, so I thought I'd be okay to…”

Sicheng had shaken his head. “No, it’s fine. It’s… Hello, Winwin.” The name sounded right, though he swore he couldn’t remember thinking it up himself. 

“Hello,” Winwin had replied, with a charming sort of smile. He’d hummed under his breath as he’d dressed himself in the clothes Sicheng had set out for him an hour earlier, his hands shaking with nerves.

Winwins hand’s never shaked. 

Sicheng knew he was out of his depth with this choice—this momentous, life altering, life _creating_ choice— from the very start, but it was already too late to change it, so he’d called his clone Winwin and he'd let him dress in his favourite sweater, and then they’d walked around the compound, Sicheng showing him this room and that equipment, and telling him about the people who had lived here at the start of the mission. 

Winwin had listened, nodded and asked questions, but Sicheng came to properly understand later that Winwin held every memory of Sicheng’s, anyway. Even the most intimate ones. He didn’t need to be told how to radio into to Base and he didn’t need to be shown around the compound vegetable gardens at the other end of the complex, because it all came naturally to him, like riding a bike comes back after years without riding one, but he’d allowed Sicheng to do this anyway, to show him around like he was a guest, and Sicheng is grateful for it when he thinks back to that day. 

Sometimes he doesn't regret what he did. Sometimes.

Before long, there is less than a year left of Scheng’s tenure here on the empty planet, and he thinks with awe about how quickly the last few years have gone. Time passes in strange ways, in loops and curves, and time before Winwin, and time with Winwin is unnervingly different. Life with him is so easy it’s almost like a dream. Or maybe it’s a nightmare— maybe the impending doom that Sicheng feels in his belly now is punishment for all of the bad choices he’s ever made, and this one especially. 

Winwin is a secret, everything they do and say, and feel is a secret. Sicheng feels like he is made out of secrets now. They consume every part of him: the ones he’s kept from his employers, the ones he’s kept from the man with bare feet cooking porridge in their secluded home, and the ones he tells himself on a daily basis (ones like _this might turn out okay_ ). 

He is simultaneously the happiest and the most scared he’s ever been, and he tastes guilt on his tongue every time Winwin kisses him.

At first, he’d told Winwin that Moon Corp had granted him permission to create a clone, but Winwin isn’t stupid, he’s _clever_ , and he’d said “Really? Because that's missing from your memories, you know. Why is that?”

“Because it’s a lie,” he’d admitted, pretty much straight away. Winwin had just smiled at him, then, and squeezed his hand in reassurance. 

Today, nine months exactly before Moon Corp plan to destroy the compound at mission end, Winwin finds Sicheng in the library a little before noon and asks, “Where do you go when you leave me in the mornings?"

“Huh?” Sicheng looks up from his work. He has a report to send over to Base today, and it’s due before dinner.

“When you pretend to be in the gym really early in the mornings, where do you go?” Winwin sits at the edge of the desk. Some of Sicheng’s papers crease beneath where he sits. 

“I just walk.” Sicheng puts down his pen. “I walk out past the edge of the compound. There’s nothing out there. I just... Go to think. Or to not think. I don't know.” 

Winwin fidgets with the papers next to him. He looks softer round the edges than usual; his hair is still damp from showering and he looks sad. Sicheng has never really seen Winwin look restless like this, not in five years together. It's jarring really, because fidgeting is Sicheng's thing, not Wiwin's.

“Sometimes I wonder if you’re ever coming back,” Winwin says and then he looks away.

“I’m sorry.” Sicheng takes Winwin’s hand and waits for him to turn back. Looking into Winwin’s eyes is like looking into an abyss, but one filled with love. 

“I forgive you.” Winwin smiles, and he leans down to meet Sicheng’s mouth in an indulgent kiss. By the time they leave the library, Sicheng hasn’t got anymore work done, but he doesn’t care. He’s just glad that Winwin is more like himself again, whistling as he heads towards the kitchen to start dinner.

 _We’re different,_ Sicheng thinks, because it’s all he can do, but today he isn't as sure. 

The first time that Moon Corp had radioed in from Base after Sicheng cloned himself, Winwin answered the call as if he thought nothing of it, as if he’d done it before a hundred times. “Dong Sicheng checking in.” He’d leaned casually against the workstation. “Weather down here is humid and sunny with storms, but it is eight degrees down on last month, so that's a positive."

The temperature readings would not have been positive a few hundred years ago, before the planet had all but burned up and made human life near impossible to maintain, but it’s a victory now— it suggests that the earth is cooling again, that one day soon people might be able to survive here without the safety of specially designed compounds and suits to protect them. Still, it’s not safe to spend long periods outside the compound, even in the suit that Moon Corp specially designed for this mission. Sometimes Winwin thinks about the storms, just like the one that had taken the rest of the crew—he thinks of the rain, the wind and the lightning, and the intense, humid heat that had surrounded it all, and he thinks about the eerie calm that always followed.

That’s how he feels about Winwin. He’s intense, and he’s electric and he’s _everywhere_ , until he closes his eyes, and a wave of relief falls over Sicheng, because if only for a moment he need not stare into the eyes of a beautiful, devastating mess that was all his fault. 

Sicheng had swallowed a strange sort of fear once the radio had gone silent that first time that Winwin had answered the call. “Why did you answer the radio?” he’d asked. He tried to make it sound like an innocuous question. “Why did you say you were me?”

He got an innocuous answer. “Isn’t that why I’m here?” Winwin had asked. He sounded amused. “To share the workload with you?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Sicheng felt ashamed at how wary he’d been. Surely, he thought, he should be able to trust Winwin, out of everyone in this world. Surely he should trust _himself_.

“Would you rather I didn’t do it again?” Winwin had asked, then, head cocked to the side. Sicheng felt like Winwin could see through him.

“No, it’s— it’s fine.” He’d smiled then, and Winwin had smiled back. “I only hear from Base every couple of days in the stormy season anyway, and even less often when it’s calm. And when they do radio in, it’s basic questions with clipped answers. They don’t even tell me the news from home.” He sighed.

“So that’s not why I’m here.” Winwin had looked at him. “You said I was here to share the workload, but I’m not. I’m here because you’re lonely.”

“If you knew, why did you ask?” Sicheng had blushed, and he could feel it from his ears to the tip of his nose. 

“To see if you’d lie to me,” Winwin had said. “I wasn’t sure if you would do.”

He wondered that night, as they ate dinner in silence at the table meant to fit ten people, if what he’d done by cloning himself really was split his entire being in two, rather than duplicating it, and the thought terrified him. He _had_ been lonely—desperately, agonisingly lonely—and he still would be now, if he hadn’t done what he had. But _now_ he would never be alone again, because Winwin would always be in his head no matter what.

Years later, Sicheng still isn’t sure which of the two scenarios is worse.

It’s coming up to summer where they are in the northern hemisphere of the desolate planet, which means they have almost six months until the mission end. Sicheng wakes up most mornings feeling sick, but he’s hiding it as best he can, which is to say he isn’t hiding it very well.

Winwin pours out two large glasses of red wine with the original label removed and replaced with the Moon Corp logo. Sicheng takes a sip, grateful for the distraction that alcohol can be to almost any other thought. “Do you think it’s a Merlot?” He muses aloud. 

“I haven’t a damn clue. It tastes good, though.” Winwin studies the glass, holding it in front of him obnoxiously. "Full bodied, hints of... Wine."

Sicheng laughs. “I think it’s a Merlot,” he says. “It reminds me of one I used to drink with Jaehyun, my—“

“—Your ex.” Winwin takes a sip. “Your memories of him are… interesting.” He raises an eyebrow. “You know, I've never been able to tell from them whether you loved him.”

“Neither have I,” Sicheng replies. “And I _lived_ through those memories. I guess I was never really sure.”

Winwin grins. They don’t talk much about the people Sicheng dated before he joined Moon Corp, and sometimes it scares him to know that Winwin holds his deepest, most intimate memories inside of him, but that’s Sicheng’s fault. He could have erased things before he completed the cloning process, but he hadn’t been thinking straight when he did it, and anyway, Sicheng takes comfort in the fact that Winwin can do as he pleases with the knowledge he has: it’s his autonomy to forget things or mull them over as he wishes. Just because he created Winwin, doesn’t mean Sicheng has ever wanted to _control_ him. 

“Brains are complicated things.” Winwin puts down his glass. He has wine-stained lips that Sicheng wants to kiss. “Hearts are too.”

“Everything is complicated.” Sicheng sighs. _And it’s all my fault,_ he doesn’t say, but then he doesn’t have to— it’s probably written all over his face. He still feels overwhelmed by guilt most mornings. 

"How do you know you're in love?" Winwin asks, then. There is a vulnerability to his face that Sicheng doesn't notice very often, but it's probably always there, deep down. 

Sicheng feels euphoria mixed with guilt, mixed with the soft feather-touch of being in love. "I... I think you just know," he says. 

Winwin nods. "We just know."

"Yeah." Sicheng breathes in. "Yeah, we do."

Winwin fucks him slowly that night.

He whispers, “Your heart is good,” against the shell of Sicheng’s ear, like he knows how much the guilt is eating him up, and Sicheng loves him for it. Afterwards, as they lie together in the soft afterglow of the compound lights, Sicheng holds Winwin as close as he can, chest to chest so their identical hearts are pressed together, just skin and bones between. 

“Base radioed in with a reminder of the mission completion date while you were in the shower this morning,” Winwin tells him. His breath tickles Sicheng’s skin. “They’re sending a return ship down on the nineteenth of January next year.”

Sicheng doesn’t want to respond, because that will acknowledge the fact that they don’t have much time left down here in the peace and quiet of their own world. The last six years have gone by in a blur and Sicheng knows he's going to be facing up to his actions soon. “Let’s not… Let’s not think about it.” He shakes his head. “Just for tonight.”

They’re both thinking about it, but they pretend for each other. Winwin keeps quiet and Sicheng loves him most in that moment.

When Sicheng joined up the basic training with Moon Corp, Taeil had just won Neo-Scientist of the Year 2539 aged just 27. He was, the news had announced, the youngest person to have done so in over one hundred years, and everything about his company was exciting. Moon Corp aimed to take research to the next level and to make Earth fully habitable again within thirty five years, and even though Sicheng would be fifty eight by then, it didn't seem all that far away.

(Time, back then, had seemed a very linear thing, which seems so ridiculous now.)

If Earth was habitable, the news said, the human population could reach to over a billion again within fifty years, and seven billion within less than five hundred. If Earth was habitable, babies could be born breathing _real_ air again, and not the stale stuff that is eight times recycled up on the new home planets.

" _Real_ _air_ and _fresh air_ are not synonymous," Ten had pointed out when they'd watched the news broadcast together. "From what I hear, Earth is a cess-pit of toxicity and any babies being born are better off up here, recycled air or not."

"Maybe, but it would be cool to make a difference. It's not like I'm not doing anything else with my life," Sicheng had pointed out to his friend, and he was top in his class for Neo-Sciences, so he'd applied to the Post-Education scheme at Moon Corp and had got in easily.

After his year of basic training, he'd been selected for the first mission to Earth: an intimidatingly massive event which would see ten of the most skilled Neo-Scientists ever to have graced space living together on the old planet for ten years. They’d live and work together in a compound specially regulated with non-toxic air, running water and all the mod cons of the home planets, collecting data and experimenting with the environment around the compound to see if it was truly possible to send people back in larger numbers. 

Sicheng was the youngest person selected, and he was scared and excited, and he felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility. 

He feels much the same every single morning now, over nine years into the mission, as he wakes up next to his biggest mistake and greatest love packaged into an identical body to his own, and wonders if today will be the day that the weight of his own secrets implode in on him.

With their time together coming to an inevtiable end, Sicheng vows to make more of an effort to make Winwin feel loved. It’s the least he deserves and the most Sicheng can give him right now.

“Thank you,” he says, pausing to press a soft kiss to Winwin’s cheekbone a few days later, as they stand close and take temperature readings in the indoor gardens together.

Winwin looks up from his console and smiles almost shyly. “For what?”

Sicheng doesn’t know, really. “For… All of it,” he says. "Everything you do round here. Everything you do for me."

Winwin shrugs and pushes his hair from his eyes. “It’s not like I had much of a choice,” he replies, tongue in cheek. “I just woke up here one day.” 

“Yes, well…” Sicheng swallows the lump in his throat. “Sorry.”

“I’m joking.” Winwin laughs. His teeth show when he does, and for a second they look sharp and terrifying, but Sicheng knows he’s imagining things, because the very same teeth are sat in neat rows in his own mouth right this second. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Sicheng pushes away the urge to bite down on his bottom lip. “Do you ever wish I hadn’t created you?” he asks. The temperature reader beeps to confirm that it’s colder than it was this time last year. That’s a good thing, that’s a sign that life could be sustained on this planet again. Neither of them react to it.

“No.” Winwin looks up at him. “Why? Do you ever wish you hadn’t created me?”

Sicheng shakes his head. “Of course not. I've never thought that,” he says, hurriedly, but the taste of the lie lingers on his tongue for a long time afterwards. It's easy to kiss it away, to lose himself in Winwin's touch, his whispers and the way that he moves around Sicheng's body, but it always comes back around.

The first time that they got drunk in the compound was the first time either of them had ever been drunk. Moon Corp had supplied enough alcohol for two to three drinks per month each for ten people which the team were advised they could enjoy at their discretion within a group setting, should they wish. 

Sicheng had never touched alcohol before he came to earth, his parents never had any and he wasn't much interested in breaking rules until recently. When he came to Earth, while there was alcohol at his disposal, he didn’t drink when the team did, because he didn’t have any interest in it, not when he wanted to be on top of his game every day. So, before Winwin, Sicheng had never experienced the novelty of alcohol's heady intoxication that heightens the senses, makes every touch electric, and every decision feel like it’s the best. 

(He'd never experienced the headaches the next morning, either).

Being drunk was the first thing, Winwin told him with a grin, that they were experiencing for the first time together. Everything else had been Sicheng’s first, and Winwin’s second. Everything else that he’d done, Winwin had said, started as an unfamiliar memory that wasn’t his own. The first time that Winwin had done anything—breathed, sang, jerked off in the shower— it was something Sicheng had already done, so to Winwin it didn’t really feel like a first time at all.

“I’m not sure I like it,” he’d told Sicheng once, loose-lipped and sleepy. “Having over twenty years of memories that don’t really belong to me. I haven’t lived them, I just— just have them in my brain. And I don't like some of them. Some of them make me sad, some of them make me jealous. You have a lot of memories of sleeping with Jaehyun and... I know I shouldn't feel jealousy, but... It's weird.”

Over one long evening about four months into their life together, they’d made a list of things a Sicheng had never done and crossed out all of the ones that were impossible to achieve inside the compound. Getting drunk seemed the easiest to fulfill. Plus, Sicheng had pointed out, it would be a shame to waste any of the drink stores since at the end of the mission the entire compound was to be blown up to stop rival corporations from sending down subsequent missions to utilise the site themselves. The Corp didn’t seem to think it a waste, or a shame, they just saw it as a way to stay ahead of the game. 

Sicheng had opened a bottle of red wine the night after, with the list out on the table in front of them. They had counted to three and experienced their first taste—the sharpness and the richness all at once—at exactly the same time. 

_This_ was the first night that they’d felt truly equal. So they drank, and they turned the speakers up as loud as they could and played their favourite songs over the compound’s sound system, laughing at nothing and at everything— at the whole, entire, fucking mess they were in— and then collapsing in a drowsy sort of bliss and falling alseep.

When he’d woken up in the dark hours later, Sicheng was alone. Winwin had cleared everything away. Even the wine glasses were cleaned and dried. Sicheng sat alone with only his thoughts, blinking into the darkness and wondering if any of this was even real, and then he'd headed to bed.

Winwin was asleep in his room when Sicheng had checked, and Sicheng had felt a desperate choke of warmth and affection towards him, along with a pain in the back of his head as dehydration kicked in.

Winwin knows what makes Sicheng feel good, and he knows when to touch and when to stop. They move in perfect sync around each other, a mirror image of lust and sin, and they’re the same but they’re completely different too. They’re two people, even if they do look like they’re one. They were born in different ways, at different times, and even if he has shared his memories with Winwin, Sicheng knows that since the day that Winwin appeared in front of him, they’ve been making different memories of their own ever since. 

Different people, different paths, different bodies— warm and pliant and willing bodies that know each other intimately. Sicheng repeats this like a mantra at night: _we’re different, we’re different, we’re different_. 

“Do you still feel like this is wrong?” Winwin asks him carefully one night, under a cover of darkness in their bedroom. It’s never pitch black: the spotlights that surround the compound for security a constant reminder that they’re not living a normal life out here. “That we’re in love?”

“Sometimes,” Sicheng replies. It’s more like _all of the damn time_ , but saying that wouldn’t be fair on anybody. 

Winwin shifts in the bed beside him, turning onto his side to see Sicheng. Sicheng feels Winwin’s stare even though he purposely avoids his eye contact. “How many times do I have to tell you that everything I’ve done since I woke up is what _I_ wanted to do?”

When Winwin realises Sicheng won’t indulge him and look at him, he rolls onto his back and rests his arms behind his head instead. 

"It doesn't matter what you want, not to the Corp," Sicheng says finally, after a while of lying in silence. He's been trying to pick his words carefully, but they come out sounding choked. "I gave you this life, but you’re _illegal_. And that’s down to me.”

“So you broke a rule. But you did it because you were _lonely_. It’s not your fault, and I don’t care that you did it. I like being alive!” Winwin laughs, as if this is simple. “I like being alive and I like you, and I don’t really give a fuck about what anyone else thinks about it.”

“The mission ends in 6 months, Winwin. It ends and Moon Corp find out, and then what?” Sicheng still can’t look anywhere but the ceiling. He's so frustrated by Winwin's flippancy. _He_ was never this flippant, this isn't a trait from Sicheng's gene pool. This is just Winwin being Winwin. Sicheng loves him for it.

“Could you leave me behind?” Winwin asks him, his voice is steady but Sicheng can _feel_ the uncertainty in it.

“Of course not.” Sicheng is surprised Winwin can even ask such a thing. The thought of it is almost impossible.

Winwin scoffs, and stretches his limbs casually, back to the flippancy. “I could, I’d leave you, easy,” he says.

“What?” 

Sicheng looks, then, and he’s met with bright, wide eyes, shining against the light. Winwin kisses him once and then falls back against the pillows. “I’m joking. You’re so highly strung, come on Sicheng. Loosen up!” Winwin laughs, but Sicheng knows that laughter and it’s the one he uses when he actually wants to cry. 

Later, Winwin whispers, “I didn’t mean it. I’m just… I’m using humour to deflect the pain.”

“I know.” Sicheng lets Winwin pull him closer and relishes the warmth of his skin. “I know you are.” 

“You don’t do that. It’s funny. We’re the same, but we aren’t. We think so differently now, we act so differently. Your memories don't feel like they belong to me, they aren't _mine_ , they just happen to be imprinted on our identical brain.” Winwin sighs against his skin.

"It's true, but..."

Winwin sighs again, this time sadder. “But I’m illegal, I _know_. And the people that count wouldn’t see the differences we’d do. They’d just see a mindless, right-less, clone.”

Long after Winwin is asleep, Sicheng lies awake. We’re different, he thinks. _We’re different, we’re different._

Maybe they are in some ways— ones invisible to the human eye. And in other ways, maybe they aren’t different at all, maybe they’re just the same: scared, desperate, and in love. 

_We’re different_ , he thinks, and then he falls asleep and dreams of hundreds of blank-eyed Winwin’s, everywhere he turns, crowding him and grabbing him until he can't be sure he isn’t one of them too. 

They didn't get together quickly. It hadn't been an instant attraction, something based on physical attraction, even if that's there too.

They fell in love the way that anyone might. They'd been strangers, they became friends, and then: love. By some definitions, it's a boring sort of story, but by others it's a whole damn moral mind-fuck of a story. Sicheng struggles to separate the two sometimes, but Winwin seems to have less trouble.

It had been a strange sort of evening in the compound, two hundred and eighty one days after Winwin had emerged from the cloning chamber when something seemed to change between them. They were in the bathroom side by side, a report to Base completed twenty minutes before. It had been submitted late, and Sicheng was worrying that Base would scold him. Winwin was ready to argue back with them if they called in over the radio to remark on it, but luckily no radio call had come.

Sicheng was washing his face and trying not to look too close at the tired circles under his eyes, while Winwin brushed his teeth next to him. Sicheng remembers the quiet, it had been _so_ quiet that night— no windstorms or hail outside, and he’d liked that. It had felt comfortable, being with Winwin likes this, doing inane everyday things they’d be doing back home if they weren’t confined to earth. 

When Winwin had spoken, his voice had come out almost in a whisper, like he didn’t want to disturb Sicheng’s peace. “Look at us,” he’d said. “Look at us stood together.”

Sicheng had looked up from his towel and caught Winwin’s eyes in the mirror, confused. “What?”

“Just look,” Winwin had urged. He was smiling, but he stopped so their expressions in the glass matchef each other’s. “I’m an exact copy of you. Down to—down to the tiniest of details, right? A carbon copy?”

“Hmm.” Sicheng had stayed still, watching Winwin’s reflection speak. 

“But, and tell me if I’m crazy, because maybe I am, but sometimes I feel like we’re nothing alike at all.” His smile was unsure, like he knew what he was saying might not make any sense. He looked handsome in the soft lighting.

“I feel the same,” Sicheng had admitted and it had been a relief to hear it and even more of a relief to say it himself. "So if you're crazy, I guess I must be too."

“You're not crazy," Winwin had told him.

"Sometimes I forget what you are." Sicheng had stepped closer to the mirror and had stared at his own reflection, his own tired eyes, his own chapped lips. “We don’t even look alike. I mean, we do, obviously, but… I don’t see any of myself when I look at you.” 

“We’re separate people.” Winwin was nodding, smiling at him when Sicheng had turned to face him. “We’re different.” 

When Sicheng looked down, he realised they were holding hands, except he couldn’t even remember when they’d started doing so. 

It wasn't long after that night that Sicheng started to notice the way Winwin looked at him when he thought Sicheng wasn’t looking. It scared him and it excited him, and he wasn’t sure how to take it, so he ignored it for as long as he could, only looking back when Winwin was focused elsewhere. They did this for a while, skirting around feelings, acting like school-kids with a crush, but there is only so much skirting around the truth that you can do when you share an entire planet with no one but each other.

Winwin has always been self assured and charming, things Sicheng has only ever half been, halted by insecurities and self imposed responsibilities since he can remember. Winwin has always acted where Sicheng hesitates, so it stands to reason that he'd kissed Sicheng first.

They’d been on the monthly perimeter check of the compound, to see if any new foliage had begun growing outside of the compound walls, which would suggest life could be sustained. Finding nothing had been disappointing, and Winwin had radioed into Base as Dong Sicheng and had given them the update while Sicheng hung up the suits they’d worn and disconnected the oxygen tanks for storage. 

“You look tense.” Winwin had placed a hand on his shoulder. "Is there anything I can do?"

Sicheng had shaken him off. “I’m okay. Nothing a session in the gym won’t sort.” He’d tried out a smile that he knew wouldn’t convince Winwin, but it was worth a try. 

Sicheng had been halfway out of the room when Winwin had said it. “There’s not something else you’d wanna do?” 

“What?” And Sicheng remembers his heart crashing in his chest, and he remembers willing his legs to keep walking, but he hadn’t. He’d stopped and turned back, and had let Winwin close the distance he’d made between them. 

“Because there is something else I’d like to do, and I think you might do too.” Winwin had a gaze that Sicheng couldn’t believe he himself could ever match. He still doesn’t think he could now. Winwin had lifted his hand and he’d touched Sicheng’s cheek with steady fingers, and Sicheng had thought, _oh, this is where everything changes. "_ Do you?"

Sicheng had nodded, wordless, and Winwin kissed him with such surety that Sicheng had almost forgotten his own name. Winwin kissed him like he was _made_ for this very purpose, and it did things to Sicheng’s brain that no one else had for a long time, so he’d let Winwin pull him close and had kissed him back, matching his pace, his pressure, hardly bothering to breathe. 

Back then, Winwin slept in another room, one of the empty rooms left behind by one of the team, someone who’d died before Winwin even came to be. He didn’t sleep in his own room that night, or any nights after that one. 

“You’re so good at this. Better than I am.” Sicheng smiles. They’re harvesting the last of the plants from the indoor gardens, ready to pack the samples for the return journey. Sicheng’s clippings are different lengths, they’re messy. Winwin’s are uniform, and he makes it look easy. He makes a lot of things look easy, he has since the beginning. 

“Not true.” Winwin looks pleased about the compliment, but he shakes his head. “I’m just doing it the way you’re doing it.”

Sicheng nudges him playfully. “Copycat.”

Winwin opens his mouth as if to reply, but he seems to decide against it. 

“I didn’t mean— I don’t think of you that way, as a copy. You know I don’t.” Sicheng puts down his shears, ignoring the plant. He puts his hand on Winwin’s arm. The muscles in his arms are more defined than Sicheng’s now; they’re different, that way too.

“I know you don’t, but I am one, aren’t I? By definition. I’m just your clone.” He doesn’t seem bitter about it, or even sad. He just says it like it is, with the perfect air of nonchalance that only Winwin can seem to achieve, and Sicheng is in awe of it, of _him_. 

“You’re not _just_ anything.” Sicheng’s mouth is dry. “You’re the most important person in my life,” he admits. 

“Same,” Winwin replies. Neither of them mention the fact that Sicheng is, technically, the _only_ person in Winwin’s life. That wouldn’t exactly be helpful right now.

“Six weeks to go,” Winwin tells him, later, as Sicheng takes his turn to cook. “Six weeks until this is over. Maybe we should come up with a plan.”

“Let’s not think about that now.” Sicheng relishes the sharp heat of the oil in the pan he’s heating, even when it spits up and burns his skin. 

“I’ve thought about it, though.” Winwin presses. He seems eager to say his piece. “Just say it was an accident. Or— or say you had to do it, for medical reasons. They might understand. Surely there is something we could do to explain it. I can lie and I know you can too.”

“They’ll arrest us.” Sicheng let’s the oil sizzle and ignores Winwin's remark about the secrets they keep. “They’ll… They might do worse than that to you. There’s no good excuse for illegal cloning. Being lonely just doesn’t cut it as an excuse.” 

Winwin exhales. He takes Sicheng’s elbow and gently moves him away from the hot pan, taking over the cooking seamlessly. “What’s our other option? There isn't another way out of this and you _know_ that.”

“Maybe we don’t go back. We don’t take the rescue pod back.” Sicheng stands there, in the middle of the kitchen, forming words that sound like plans made in desperation. “The main satellite is already damaged, we could do something— to the radio satellite. We can lose contact with them in the next few weeks, that will give us time to... To make arrangements.”

Winwin shakes his head. “Wouldn’t they get suspicious? Don’t they want their test results, their samples? They won’t just let you disappear,” Winwin tells him, as if _he’s_ the expert. Sicheng has no idea how he’s handling this so calmly, so matter of fact. He wants to see the emotion that he _knows_ Winwin is trying to suppress. He wishes he were better at suppressing it too. “This whole place is on a timer to explode, or implode, or whatever they're gonna do when the mission ends, Sicheng. We can't go outside without unlimited oxygen that we don't have, and we can’t stay here because it won't exist, you know that.”

“Of course I know that. It was me who fucking trained for this mission, _I_ work for them. _I know._ ” He drops the spatula he didn’t even know he was still holding on the floor and it clatters loudly. 

The noise startles them both, and suddenly they’re staring at each other, and then the oil hisses behind them and makes them both jump again, and then they’re laughing, the tension in the air dissipating quickly in a matter of seconds as they realise how pointless arguing is.

Winwin turns off the heat, wraps Sicheng in his embrace and they laugh. Holding each other in the middle of the stupid oversized kitchen on the stupid good-for-nothing planet, they kiss slow and long, and they don’t even finish cooking dinner, because dinner seems insignificant compared to the future they don’t have together. 

That night, as they lie in bed, Winwin kisses his head softly. “We will figure this out,” he says. “I know you don’t have an idea now, but… One of us will have one. We’ll figure it out.” 

He’s trying so hard to make it sound convincing, but sometimes Sicheng can see through Winwin too, and he knows Winwin is as scared as he is. Sicheng falls asleep second, as he always does, that night. He listens to Winwin sleep, but tonight his breathing is erratic and shallow. Sicheng just wants Winwin to sleep soundly again, like he did until so recently. 

The truth is that Sicheng does have an idea as to how to resolve the mess he got them both into, but it’s not one he can discuss with Winwin. Winwin would say no without even considering it.

Sicheng knows this, because he would too, and in that respect, at least, they’re the same.

There was a time, long before Winwin, before he’d even been recruited by Moon Corp, that Sicheng thought that he was destined for a life of solitude. It wasn’t long after Jaehyun had broken up with him— not that he blamed Jaehyun for that. They’d never have worked out in the long term, and Jaehyun was so nice that it was impossible to hold anything against him. 

For a year, Sicheng had dated here and there, but nothing had stuck, and that seemed okay. He’d even decided, at one point, that he could see himself living the life of the eternal bachelor. Ten had said, “No, I see you settling down one day. I see you finding The One.” He’d said the words ominously, wiggling his eyebrows, and Sicheng had laughed it off. 

Sicheng wishes Ten had been wrong, but he wasn’t. Sicheng sees it clearly now, in the days before the mission ends. Winwin might have come into being unconventionally, and he might be genetically illegal, and he might be a secret to the entire universe, but that doesn't matter one little bit to Sicheng. Winwin is irritating, he's a puzzle that Sicheng should be able to piece together easily, but he makes it difficult, and that's _good_. That's good because it's his thing, his own personality, and it doesn't matter who Sicheng has ever been, because Winwin is so much better than him.

Sicheng imagines introducing all of them— Ten, and Kun and Jaehyun—to him. He imagines their reactions, he imagines their shock, their concern, and then he imagines them really getting to know him, realising that he's like no one they've ever met. He's not a clone, not really. Except he _is_ a clone, and that means none of the rest of it is important, not to law, not to morality.

Sicheng had a team, and then he had nothing, and then he had a rose that didn't bloom, and a rose that did. Winwin tickles him and laughs happily, as they bicker in the kitchen, four days to mission end, and Sicheng wonders if they can ever be as happy as they are in this moment.

If things were different, if _everything_ was different, Ten would give Sicheng a smug look and say, "Told you that you'd find the one and you have." And Sicheng would roll his eyes and smile against Winwin's shoulder, and say, "Yeah, I have."

Still, finding your person and being able to be _with_ them are two entirely different things, Sicheng has come to realise. It hurts, but maybe that’s what he deserves. Maybe that’s how his life was always going to end: with pain, and fear, alone again.

When the return pod lands on Earth, just outside of the compound, Sicheng feels a lot calmer than he ever expected to in this moment. They spent their last night wrapped up in each other, refusing to let each other go, and even now Winwin seems reluctant to leave Sicheng’s side for even a moment. 

“When you radio called base the other day, what exactly did you say?” Winwin asks for the tenth time. He’s been asking about the call he’d missed when he was in the gardens, since Sicheng first told him about it, 

“Just to expect two people,” Sicheng says. “And that I would explain the rest later.”

“And they just… accepted it?” Winwin doesn't look convinced, but Sicheng doesn't need him to be convinced, he just needs him not to question it until it's too late.

Sicheng nods. “Yes, so put on your suit and head out. I just need to close down the lab, do the final report, and then I’ll follow you out.” He heads towards the lab. He can hardly breathe, he won’t breathe until Winwin goes. Winwin needs to go. He has to _live_.

“I’ll wait for you.” Winwin hovers. He puts on his suit slowly. “I’ll wait here and we can head to the pod together.”

“No, no.” Sicheng fakes a laugh. He feels sick. “It’s your turn to do something first. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Are you sure?” 

Winwin is watching him too closely. Sicheng can’t look him in the eye. How could he have ever been so naive as to think he could pull any of this off? “Of course!” 

“Ok, well, I’ll just make sure you get into your suit.” Winwin hesitates. There's a crease in his forehead that Sicheng wishes he could smooth out. "Then I'll head out there."

“No, don’t worry about that. Please just go and get into the ship. Please.” Sicheng turns back, and he knows his face is one of clear pain and desperation. “ _Please_ , love.”

“Sicheng… What's happening?” Winwin pauses, and then he shakes his head and puts down his helmet. The crease in his forehead deepens and panic sets into his eyes. “No. No, you can’t do this. _No_. You’re coming too, you _told_ them!”

Sicheng wishes he wasn’t crying, he’s always hated crying in front of people, but he can’t stop the tears. “I couldn’t tell them… I can’t let them do anything to you. They can’t know. Please just go.”

“So you expect me to leave here without you? And return to _your_ life?” Winwin’s voice waivers. They’ve never argued like this before, not in six years.

Sicheng takes Winwin’s arm. “Times running out, please,” he begs. “They’re expecting you…”

“No, they’re expecting _you_!”

“You said you could do it, you said you could leave me.” Sicheng doesn’t even know why he brings this up, but he’s clutching desperately at stupid things now. 

“I was joking! You _know_ I can’t… I won’t leave you behind. I can’t— I can’t live your life. I just want to be _in_ it.” He pushes his hair up off his face in that way he does instinctively. Sicheng loves him for it. “You can’t just send me home in your place and stay here, you’ll die.” 

“I really think…. I think you should go. You’ll do so well, you’ll really love it. You can taste all the food that auntie cooked. And you can experience so many things I've never done!” Sicheng takes a deep breath. “You’ll be good at them, better than I’d be.” 

“I don’t care.” His gaze flickers between Sicheng’s face and the doors. “I can’t do it. I won’t go without you. This is the worst idea you’ve had in the last decade. Worse than cloning yourself.” He laughs, but it’s more of a sob. 

Sicheng smiles through his own tears. “I love you,” he says, because there is nothing else left. 

“Even if it’s us against the whole universe, I’d bet on us coming out on top.” Winwin tells him. He picks up the other suit that Sicheng had set out in his pretence that he would follow Winwin out to the return pod, and passes it to him. “I’m arrogant like that. Now put on your suit and let’s get out of here before Moon Corp blow up our home.”

“And then what?” Sicheng steps into the suit as if on autopilot, the way he has every time he’s chosen to step outside of the glass building he’s become so accustomed to living in for the last ten years. He’s grown up here, turn 25, turned _30_ here, and now he’s going to leave a sci—criminal, with the love of his life. 

Winwin shrugs. “We run? We hide it? We fight? I have no idea. But we’ll do it together, just like always. How about it?”

Winwin and Sicheng shut down the lab together. Sicheng tries to steady his nerves by pretending this is just another day in their solitary confinement. He pretends that dinner is in the oven, that there is a bottle of unnamed red wine waiting for them on the table, that afterwards they’ll go to bed together and wake up with the sun in their eyes. He’ll miss it, he realises, and he wishes more than anything that he hadn’t spent the last six months terrified of what was to come instead of enjoying the sanctity of the compound, but he can’t go back and he can’t change things, and he is terrified, _so_ terrified, of what will come of him and Winwin when they return to the real world, away from this desolation.

He tells himself that he has no regrets as he logs out of the computer system for the last time, but that isn’t true. Still, he can’t imagine life without Winwin now, and it _is_ love, he’s sure of that.

“Don’t look so sad, you’ll ruin your good looks,” Winwin tells him with a smile as he seals seedling samplings up. He’s doing that thing again where he tries to distract them both from their impending doom with tongue in cheek humour. Sicheng is grateful for it. 

They collect up the samples Base have asked Sicheng to return with, and then they survey their old home together as they fit their helmets and secure their oxygen tanks for the walk to the ship. Sicheng hadn’t cared when he’d first heard what Moon Corp intended to go to the compound after ten years, but now he’s angry that a place of such significance is to be fated to rubble. 

They hold hands through their suits as best they can as they approach the pod—ship, hearts racing as the doors open. _We’re different,_ Sicheng repeats his mantra, as they step on board. _We’re different, we’re different._

And they are, in every subtle way, but not in the obvious. In the obvious way, they’re the same. Maybe that will come in useful when they land, and maybe it won’t, but at least they’ll find out together. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> ❤ comments appreciated.
> 
> there is potential for a part II to this story set after the return, though I'm not sure if that would be of interest to anyone with the niche pairing & all!


End file.
